BIFF X0: IMPRINTS

Films about ecological relationships and exchanges, and our connections to our land and each other. Total runtime is 79 minutes.

The BIFF X0 series focuses on cinematic poetry in pixels and on celluloid; and works that experiment with the form, function and structure of film, analog media, digital video, and film and media ecosystems.

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THE FLESH OF THE MOUNTAIN

Adam Piron (Dir), 12 minutes, USA, Western New York Premiere

THE FLESH OF THE MOUNTAIN is a material history of the Owens Valley and its overlooked but very fundamental role in shaping early American Cinema and its film industry. This started out originally as a question: Where did the silver in early celluloid filmmaking come from? This film is ultimately about the different hands this mineral went through in order to make cinematic technology possible and the detritus and ecological catastrophe left in its wake.

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WOMEN OF WAMPUM

Kelsey Leonard + Alejandro Miranda (Dir), 12 minutes, Canada, New York State Premiere

Co-Directors Kelsey Leonard + Alejandro Miranda in attendance.

Across the salt-sprayed shores of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, a gathering of Indigenous women comes together to rematriate wampum as a living system of justice, truth, and inherent relationship. WOMEN OF WAMPUM is an intimate documentary that foregrounds women knowledge keepers as they restory wampum’s role in governance, truth-telling, and intergenerational responsibility—rooted in reciprocal relationships with their mollusk relatives and coastal homelands. Through practices of teaching, making, and collective remembrance, the film examines how patriarchal disruption, colonial extraction, and climate-driven coastal change threaten not only living shores but the relationships that sustain them. Centering women-led continuity, WOMEN OF WAMPUM affirms rematriation as an expression of sovereignty, hope, and the enduring power of Indigenous women.

Featuring: Dr. Bonnie M. Freeman, Sedonna Goeman-Shulsky, Sayo’:kl^ (It Snows Again) Kindness, Courtney M. Leonard, Dr. Kelsey Leonard, Julia Marden, Verna McGregor, Dr. Mary Amanda McNeil, Paula Peters (SonkWaban), Dr. Jolene Rickard, Lydia A W-Chavez, Berta Welch, and Yohnyah Williams.

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TUKTUIT : CARIBOU

Lindsay Aksarniq McIntyre (Dir), 15 minutes, Nunavut / Canada, Western New York Premiere

An experimental documentary created with handmade and manufactured emulsions exploring the close and enduring connections between Inuit, caribou, lichens, and land use. Lichen developers help bring the images to life, while caribou hide is processed into gelatin to make handmade emulsion. Filmed primarily on the land in Nunavut where caribou struggle to maintain their lifeways amidst burn events, habitat disruption and changing conditions.

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THE BURNING OF MY COLDSPRING HOME

Caleb G. Abrams (Dir), 40 minutes, Onöndowa'ga:' (Seneca Nation – Allegany) / USA, New York State Premiere

Director Caleb G. Abrams and Composer/ Associate Producer Nathan Abrams in attendance.

Onöndowa'ga:' (Seneca) elder Stephen Gordon was twelve years old when his family was forcibly relocated from their home in Jonegano:h (Coldspring) as a result of the construction of the Kinzua Dam. Unlike his neighbors however, his family's home wasn't destroyed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- instead, Gordon's father set fire to it himself to prevent the Corps from doing the same. THE BURNING OF MY COLDSPRING HOME, an adaptation of Gordon's 2005 short story of the same name, is a meditation on grief, family, community, and the places we call home.